I’m an entrepreneur practicing intrapreneruship to benefit entrepreneurs. Sounds weird, right? To explain, I’m Product Marketing Manager for Sage One North America, a cloud accounting and invoicing app for small businesses and owner of Indie Peace, an organic cotton apparel company that's grown and sewn in the USA. I’m blessed to be in a unique position where I can support my life goal of helping small businesses in any way possible. Joining forces with the Sage One team who share the common goal has also given me the opportunity to help bring more attention to intrepreneurship and how powerful it can be in addressing small business challenges while supporting company goals.My journey also includes working for the Big Four advising Fortune 500 companies, becoming a professional photographer for 4 years, and creating a home networking company.Discussing small business challenges and providing actionable information on how to uniquely address them is my focus.

Curiosity: The One Superpower We Don't Use Enough, And How To Use It

Humans are superheroes and one of our main superpowers is curiosity. As we all know, most superheroes usually have a great weakness—the primary suppressor of power. Micro-defeatist thoughts are the primary destroyers of our curiosity. They are the “I can’t” thoughts that hold us back, the self-imposed fallacies, uncertainties, avoidance reflexes, and lies we tell ourselves. These are all the things that create inaction by surrounding us in a shell of non-truths.

Watching for these types of thoughts and removing them from your life is important. These “I can’t” thoughts come in many shapes and sizes and get their strength from how much tolerance we give them to exist in our mind and come to life by influencing our actions. Whatever amount of tolerance we give these thoughts directly correlates to how much curiosity they annihilate in our lives. More often than not, we all have common micro-defeatist thoughts that are discussed below. If left unchecked, these thoughts continue to gain power and become more resistant as we age. There is a simple way to overcome these little buggers, which I’ll provide before this article ends. Let’s discuss.

It’s all in your head.

Anything and everything is possible and much of the impossible is just a construct of your mind. Many people are curious but give power to their micro-defeatist thoughts. These thoughts are many times a bunch of myths we’ve picked up from someone or something along the way and chosen to believe. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard these comments:

“I was just not born creative”

“I’m not musically talented”

“I’m not smart enough”

“I’m too young or old to learn something like that”

“I just don’t have the eye for it”

“What if I’m not good at it and fail?”

“I just don’t have the gift”

When I delve further into these thoughts, it turns out that there is actually no justification for these curiosity-quashing mantras. It’s just simply what they have conditioned themselves to believe. They chose to let one or many of these thoughts stop their curiosity dead in its tracks. What’s even worse is science has proven many of these beliefs to be completely wrong. Curiosity with a low defeatist mindset gets the drawing on the piece of paper, the sound from the guitar, the image from the camera, and on and on and on.

Stop forgetting curiosity—be mindful of this emotion.

This is the one that I think is the most important. Awareness and attention have power across many, many things. When it comes to the odds of curiosity being abundant or at a deficit as we age, there’s certainly more in life that follows the deficit agenda.

Curiosity is an emotion. We must protect it and the way to do this is to simply stop forgetting about it and keep it top ofmind. Suppressing any emotion is unhealthy and we tend to accidentally suppress curiosity with micro-defeatist thoughts. Have you ever asked yourself how curious you are? I have been asking myself that question a lot lately. This question is not often asked, but I think it should be. I’ve always believed you can elevate curiosity by simply listening to it and I’ve never been one to run from uncertainty. This has never steered me wrong, but lately I’ve been very mindful of increasing my curiosity awareness and more alert to what works against it in my mind. It’s a great preemptive strike at making life richer, sweeter, and most importantly, happier. What thoughts are stopping you? Are there any themes running throughout these thoughts? Confront them!

If curiosity is an emotion with real force, why do we constantly overlook it? Humans are not that mindful of curiosity at any point in time and do not directly associate their level of curiosity with the impact it has on important things in life, like happiness. Therefore, most of us just forget about curiosity and end up with a curiosity deficit by accident. The point here is to highlight the fact that curiosity is often forgotten. So, just stop doing that! Illuminate curiosity in your life and be mindful of its existence and historical importance. It’s ok to be overly aware of curiosity as it is commonly suppressed as we go through life and always deserves more attention.

Turn off the avoidance instinct—approach vs. avoidance. Welcome uncertainty with open arms.

Uncertainty is all around us and feared by many. Uncertainty is used in powerful and positive ways by those who understand its true nature. Uncertainty keeps some in their seats and keeps those with a Richard Branson mindset running towards it for the better. There will always be uncertainties, but start painting uncertainty in a more positive and healthy light. Our brains are wired with the avoidance instinct versus the approach instinct. This can have a lot of control over people’s decisions, but it’s outdated.

I want to thank neuroscientist Andrew Smart, author of Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing, for collaborating with me on this article. Andrew and I had a great conversation about curiosity. His insights help make sense of some of the science behind curiosity, so people like me who are curious on the subject can understand it more.

Andrew Smart says: Underlying curiosity is this sense of not having the fear of the unfamiliar and the ability to cope with the unfamiliar. It’s this tension between curiosity being met by one or many of our avoidance instincts. It’s important to be aware of these hard-wired avoidance instincts and do the opposite of what they tell you. We have a hard-wired instinct to run from surprise and uncertainty. One theory of the brain’s global function is that it is always trying to reduce surprise. The instinct tells us it’s dangerous, but our environment is very different now. In our current culture we mostly do not have to worry about surprise from predators.

Uncertainty is a good compass point for knowing when you are on a good pathway; uncertainty is not always a signal of the negative. When we allow ourselves to be curious we quickly come face to face with confusion and uncertainty. People tend to initially resist uncomfortable and unknown feelings—their model of their world is challenged—the model of their world is constantly re-evaluated. This model is never correct and it’s supposed to be that way and not something to scare you. This is hard to internalize as our natural instincts like to go to a state of safeness and certainty.

On innovation and invention—curiosity is necessity’s brother from another mother.

The theory of relativity was born from curiosity and the obsession of what was most perplexing to Einstein. Curiosity seems to be the precursor to creativity and innovation.

Andrew Smart says: Curiosity borders on obsession with artists and scientists—some of the confusion leads to new pathways. “Dial in” wholeheartedly to what you are doing and take an interest in the mechanics and the purpose of things. This is healthy and spurs curiosity. Have fun with it. Aaron Swartz said, “Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.” Einstein once said, “I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.” The intelligence you are born with can truly be influenced and enhanced, but many leave this unchallenged.

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